A few Sundays ago, one of the sightseers accidentally locked himself in a bathroom, reports Marvin Morganti. It took two hours and a locksmith to free him (proving that the castle would have not only been a refuge in the case of earthquakes, but a safe place to escape pirates, too).

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The trappings (staffers in lab coats, drinks in test tubes) were witty and original, but the overall gala guidelines - hotel ballroom, drinks first, then dinner, speeches and fundraising auction - familiar. This was the first-ever such gala for the 30-year-old Gladstone Institutes, which has been reaching out to raise awareness of its mission "to unravel the basics of biology in order to better understand, prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological conditions such as heart failure, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease."

The Four Seasons ballroom was brimming with 450 guests, a surprising number for a first-time gala, but not when you think about that mission: Is there anyone who hasn't watched a loved one stricken by Alzheimer's, AIDS, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, diabetes?

A few months ago, touring the labs, I'd looked through a microscope and gotten gooseflesh (not a scientific term) peering at genetically altered mouse cells that had become pulsating heart cells. Dinner conversation was with immunologist-virologist Eric Verdin, whose work is no less astounding: He oversees 20 researchers working in a lab that, according to its website, "explores different biological roles of reversible protein acetylation, a post-translational modification that is gaining increasing recognition as an important regulatory mechanism." Translation: For 10 years, he's been studying aging, particularly why aging accelerates in AIDS patients. Verdin's research may result in the ability to alter that process, which already has been possible in worms. Application to humans, of course, is way off in the distance.

The more knowledge, of course, the more mysteries: It's still unknown, said Verdin, why, among species, the bigger you are, the longer you live (whales live longer than humans). Within those species, however, smaller specimens tend to live longer (little dogs outlive big ones). Why do birds of equal size to rats live longer than rats?

"What scientists need," said Gladstone Institutes President R. Sanders Williamsfrom the podium, "is the freedom to follow the results of wherever their research might lead." The event raised a total of about $900,000 - $450,000 plus a matching grant that doubled it - worth of that freedom.

-- At a University of San Francisco symposium on the hospitality industry, Craig Harrison(who spoke on "The Tao of Networking") says keynoter Michael Tchongproclaimed, "Social media has overtaken pornography as the No. 1 activity on the Internet."

-- Up and down, up and down. The Valencia Street swing, says Mission Mission, was hung once again last week and taken down once again last week.

Actor Irwin and director Carey Perloff have played together before in the fields of Beckett, and they traded quotes from "Endgame," which Perloff calls a "mordant and brilliant and sad play." But literary chops don't preclude social chops. At the party, Perloff noted the next day, "adorable" Irwin "stationed himself at the perfect strategic spot to get each glorious Chez Panisse hors d'oeuvre as it came out of the kitchen." Perhaps it was the hors d'oeuvres to which the playwright was referring when he wrote the line, "Do you believe in the life to come?"